Lost Soldiers
Page 5
Condley was surrounded by them now. The suddenly energized cyclo drivers were speaking rapidly to him in Vietnamese as they caught him up on all the latest Sai Gon gossip. Across the street the doormen grumbled, and in the park many other tourists stared curiously as the drivers mobbed him. He had stopped walking, becoming ecstatic at their attention, laughing at their insistent antics, liberated by their very presence. Two young girls joined the group, pulling insistently at his hands, trying to sell him Wrigley’s chewing gum and packs of picture postcards.
‘Cong Ly! Cong Ly! You buy gum from me, you already promise!’
‘OK! OK!’
He bought some gum, angering the little girl selling postcards. She pouted, slapping him playfully.
‘Cong Ly, you nguoi xau, you told me OK before, now I sell you for ten thousand dong, muoi ngan, muoi ngan!’
‘Muoi ngan mac qua!’ he replied laughingly, telling her she was charging way too much and then giving her a dollar half again as much, for her useless postcards.
The cyclo drivers laughed merrily, teasing him for being a sucker as the two girls ran away. As they chattered he looked at the narrow, hopeful faces, the broken and missing teeth, the dirty baseball caps, the eyes that read his every move with an intuitive exactness, the suborning invitations that he knew were all a part of their routine, a practiced and professional game. Each of them wanted to work for Condley, but they also knew that he would not hire any of them other than Dzung. In Sai Gon a cyclo driver was much more than a ride. Used properly, he was part valet, part protector, and part courier. Treated fairly, he was also fiercely loyal, but he expected loyalty in return.
Dzung waved perfunctorily again, a silly smile on his face, stepping forward and claiming his long-time client and friend. The others laughed, a few of them pushing Dzung away, keeping him behind them even though they knew that he was Condley’s only choice.
‘No, you take me, you take me! Dzung no good, Cong Ly! He lazy-y-y!’
But now Dzung was standing in front of Condley and the two grinned at each other as if they were brothers. Which in a way they were.
Just after his arrival in Sai Gon five years earlier, Condley had stood before a similar group of drivers, asking which one of them had been the best soldier during the war. And they had immediately turned to the serious-faced, tight-muscled little man, with a deference that had been palpable.
‘Dzung,’ said one of the gathered drivers, pointing to the man as the others began to fall away, looking for someone else to haul. In English it sounded like ‘zoom.’ ‘He airborne soldier, many, many fights, many awards for bravery. His father was a general. He very smart, sir, already he study in the Vietnamese Military Academy at Da Lat. He do good job for you.’
Dzung had stepped forward, wearing a shy and almost weary grin, and addressed him in English. ‘Yes, sir. I was soldier Viet Nam Cong Hoa.’
‘Dzung?’ Condley had smiled, tasting the name on his tongue and liking the man instantly. ‘Dzung cam, huh?’ Condley’s pronunciation changed the meaning to ‘Fearless,’ giving Dzung his nickname.
‘Thank you, sir.’
Dzung had stood before him with a kind of tragic openness, hands at his side, smiling self-consciously as if he were on the offering block, waiting for Condley to decide his fate. Condley had studied him as if he were indeed a horse for sale. Dzung’s face was lined, from the years and the sun, so that his age could not be accurately measured. The baseball cap he wore on the back of his head, coupled with his nervous smile, took away much of his seriousness. In fact he had seemed somehow fragile, with his narrow shoulders and the thin legs shooting out from below trouser legs that were rolled up almost to his knees so he could pedal the cyclo. But Condley had known how tightly muscled most Vietnamese were. Dzung could pedal him from here to hell and never take a break.
‘Anh co phai di tu sau chien tranh khong?’ Condley had asked, wanting to know if Dzung had been sent to the infamous ‘re-education camp’ prisons run by the communists after the war.
‘Oh, no,’ Dzung had answered carefully, playing a nervous game. ‘They send me back to school.’ He continued to smile, obviously aware of the dangers of direct conversation with a foreigner on any subject that could be labeled political. ‘I study three years in the mountains after ’75.’
‘Then you must be very smart.’ Condley had laughed, having picked up on Dzung’s careful words.
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ Dzung had said, offering the seat of his cyclo with a gesturing arm. ‘It was a very good school. They teach me many things. It’s very good now, no problem. That why I give you such good cyclo ride.’
‘Then let’s go.’
Condley had hopped aboard. Dzung took a running start, pushing his cyclo and then jumping onto the seat, and pedaled off onto Nguyen Hue Street. He had turned left almost immediately onto Le Loi, where they joined the traffic flow of seemingly thousands of vehicles. And then he had leaned forward, speaking to Condley above the noise as he pedaled the cyclo.
‘You tell me your name.’
‘Cong Ly,’ Condley had said, Vietnamising his surname as he had done so many times before, so many years ago, now falling completely into the rhythms of the city and the culture. He had then looked back and seen that Dzung was savoring his Vietnamese name – ‘Justice.’ Finally the cyclo driver had grinned widely, his face filled with a delicious happiness.
‘Cong Ly,’ said Dzung. ‘You were here before ‘75? Maybe soldier, huh?’
‘Six years, off and on.’
‘Six years? Oh, very good, sir. I know you love Viet Nam. I know.’
‘Thuong nhieu qua,’ Condley had said. Too much love.
He had been suppressing it, but he could not hold it back any longer. It sat on him, pushing his head onto his chest: the memory of a hundred nights spent with Mai’s lithe golden body pressed against him and her legs entwined around him and his lips tasting her long soft neck and her black hair falling onto his face like a gossamer veil as he kissed her and heard her whisper with delight and smelled the perfume she always wore in her hair and just below her ears. And of the morning when he returned to their little flat and felt his stomach sicken when she was not in the outer room to greet him and he realized that from upstairs he was hearing the echoing, empty sound of the shower water running, straight onto the floor like the patter of heavy rain, constant, without the interruption of a body scrubbing and rinsing underneath it. And then yelled up to her. And had known when she did not answer that she was dead.
‘I love Viet Nam. I have missed Viet Nam very much.’
Dzung had labored behind him, swaying gracefully side to side. ‘Where we go today, Cong Ly?’
The city and its traffic had been a swirling mist and the afternoon sun had beaten down on him and the dust and fumes had risen up to greet him and the cyclo had become a time cocoon, freezing him inside forever. And it had not mattered. ‘I don’t know. You take me.’
‘OK,’ Dzung had said, turning left toward the Sai Gon River. ‘I know. I know. I take you.’
And Dzung had indeed known. On that first afternoon they had floated along inside the stream of traffic, passing old memories, new sights: the old naval bases now dilapidated and falling apart, some still occupied and used by the Vietnamese military, others being leveled to make room for new hotels; the wide streets dotted with French architecture along Ton Duc Thang Street near the Sai Gon Zoo; the American Embassy, its cylindrical, screened guard posts along the high white walls rusting and empty, the roof where the last U.S. helicopter took out the last load of Americans and South Vietnamese in 1975 a haunting monument to failure; the park near the center of the city that once had been a cemetery for thousands of South Vietnamese soldiers, whose graves had now disappeared underneath the conqueror’s plow; the rising steeples and red bricks of the Duc Ba Chapel, built by the French across from the huge old post office in an area that once had marked the cultural center of the city; the ubiquitous new hotels and office buildings creeping
up toward the sky, drowning out the landmarks of the past; the stark contrast of people travelling in Mercedes and others living curbside in front of downtown buildings. It had all washed over Condley, scoured him out, insulted and consoled him, and in an odd way made him whole.
Along the way people had watched him, waved to him, and smiled. Kids on bicycles had pulled up next to him, asking in broken English if he was American and then grinning in delight when he said yes. Women had embraced him nostalgically with their eyes, sitting on little plastic stools behind curbside stalls or driving Hondas near him in the traffic. Men, young and old, alternated between scrutinising stares and welcoming, remembering grins, some calling out to him or holding up a finger and calling, ‘America Number One!’ It had become his very own homecoming parade.
As they rode, he and Dzung had conversed, throwing together a mix of Vietnamese and English that became a workable, fluent vernacular. They talked about everything, working carefully to where they could speak frankly to each other about the past and then even about the present. Their dialogue was a careful recounting of facts, devoid of opinions, which in the wrong ears might become personally dangerous. And by the time Dzung reached behind him for the pull brake and brought the cyclo to a halt in front of the Rex Hotel, the two had become friends.
Condley had sought to pay him, but Dzung had refused.
‘No, no, Cong Ly. You pay me later. When you leave or maybe one week.’
Condley had realized it was Dzung’s way of keeping him as a customer. He had relented, but then slipped his new friend fifty thousand dong, the equivalent of five dollars. ‘OK. But you buy your kids something. From me.’
Dzung had nodded, pocketing the money, his warm brown eyes showing how deeply Condley’s generosity had moved him. ‘We go tomorrow?’
‘You’re my main man, Dzung.’ Condley had patted him on a narrow shoulder. Even the mood had seemed to be a memory. ‘You’re my limo driver. Wait for me every day, I pay you ten dollars.’
And so it had been, every time Condley had returned to Sai Gon from wherever his job had taken him. He no longer stayed at the Rex Hotel, having found a smaller, cheaper, and more relaxed hotel several blocks away. So when he needed Dzung he would walk over to the Rex and claim him.
While Condley chatted with the others, Dzung had run across the street and fetched his cyclo. He now pushed it before him, dodging an arriving limousine as he made his way back to Condley. He climbed onto his seat, tested the pedals, and patted the chair in front of him, indicating that Condley should get in.
‘Where we go now, Cong Ly?’
‘You know the Kieu Hoa restaurant?’
Dzung began pedaling, fitting quickly into the flow of traffic. ‘Off Dien Bien Phu, I think. In District Three.’
‘I’ve never been there. They say it’s owned by Nguyen Manh Khoa. You remember him from before, Dzung?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Dzung, growing quiet. In Sai Gon, ‘before’ always meant before 1975, and when one talked about before 1975 it paid to be careful, even among friends. Condley looked over his shoulder and caught Dzung’s knowing smile as he pedaled along Le Loi Street, looking for the right crossing street that would take them up to District Three.
‘Nguyen Manh Khoa. He’s a very famous man.’
‘A very famous man,’ agreed Dzung somewhat evasively. ‘I think.’
‘He used to be the Bob Dylan of South Viet Nam.’
‘I don’t know Bob Dylan,’ chuckled Dzung, as always pretending innocence when Condley became too overtly political.
‘You don’t remember? I remember. He wrote and sang a lot of anti-war songs. He was against the old Sai Gon government. He sang about what he called “the cultural genocide” committed against the Vietnamese people by the French and the Americans.’
‘I don’t know, Cong Ly,’ grinned Dzung, weaving his way in and out of an unending swarm of bicycles and motorbikes and taxis. ‘Long time ago.’
‘The old government threw him into jail.’
‘I was only a soldier.’ In the midst of this thick traffic Condley had gone too far, and Dzung was going to say no more. Anyone listening to them could take down the license number on Dzung’s cyclo and report their conversation to the authorities, even the smiling young schoolgirl coasting just next to them on her bicycle. Probably not, but the prospect was never certain, and that was how they kept control.
‘They claimed he was a communist, but he said he was neutral. That the old government was corrupt, and the slaughter had gone on too long. He said.’
‘Maybe,’ shrugged Dzung, looking around him a bit nervously as he pedaled, wishing to be done with Condley’s vocal speculation.
The air was terrible from Condley’s perch on the cyclo, filled with dust and slick with fumes. It was growing dark, with an equatorial quickness that always stunned him. The traffic had thinned as they left District One. They passed a hospital and then a school. Dzung was laboring now, his body leaning side to side, putting extra weight against the pedals as he worked his cyclo uphill through the traffic. A few minutes later Dzung turned onto the wide boulevard of Dien Bien Phu. The cyclo coasted a bit, enabling him to breathe more easily. Almost alone on this stretch of road, Dzung finally nudged Condley, with what he knew was a subtle, laughing taunt.
‘So why you like his restaurant?’
‘I don’t like his restaurant. But I have to make a report to Colonel Pham and he’s eating there tonight.’
‘Colonel Pham,’ chided Dzung, unable to hold back any longer. ‘He no good, Cong Ly.’
‘He’s OK.’
‘He VC,’ said Dzung, reverting to the term for the communists that was used during the war.
‘Yeah,’ said Condley, ‘he’s VC. But he’s a good VC.’
‘VC no good, Cong Ly. You know that.’
‘He’s OK, Dzung, I’ve worked with him for three years now.’ Dzung said nothing. ‘We found the body of an American soldier yesterday. In Quang Nam Province.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘I am giving Colonel Pham the report.’
‘I am happy for you.’ Dzung paused a bit, thinking about it as he pedaled. ‘After you find all the Americans do you leave Viet Nam?’
Condley had never thought about that. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘Then maybe you don’t find them all.’
Condley looked back and caught his friend grinning once again. He laughed, and then Dzung laughed too, in a way that only two former soldiers can laugh about the dead.
‘They’re pretty hard to find, Dzung.’
‘That’s true, sir. Or else you would have found all of them already. So please take your time.’
In the darkness Dzung turned suddenly into an alleyway that joined the boulevard. At the end of the tree-shrouded lane was an old French villa that had been turned into the Kieu Hoa restaurant. The Kieu Hoa was famous, one of the two or three most elaborate restaurants in all of Sai Gon. But Condley had to force back his bile as he dismounted from Dzung’s cyclo and started for the door.
Some memories never die, as hard as we try to smile them away.
‘Wait here?’ asked Dzung, conscious of the hard stares he was receiving from the two black-uniformed valets who were more accustomed to arriving taxis and limousines than the antiquated cyclos.
Condley checked the faces of the well-fed young valets, then looked over at the near-emaciated frame of Dzung, now sitting nervously atop the cyclo. An irritation rankled him, never far from the surface when he was in Sai Gon. If things had gone differently in that long-ago war, this Da Lat-trained former officer who had served so well on the battlefield would probably be among those running the country.
But this was the way things had gone, and this was the world they all lived in. He handed Dzung ten thousand dong, which wouldn’t buy a glass of water in the Kieu Hoa but was enough for a feast just down the road.
‘Go eat. Come back and get me in an hour.’
Chapter Four
The restaurant itself was spectacular. As he entered, Condley was amazed at its elegant furnishings, replete with textured-fabric furniture, French Impressionist paintings on the walls, and European classical music played by a live string quartet. A tuxedoed maître d’ greeted him just inside the door. Other tuxedoed waiters walked rapidly to and fro, speaking variously in French and English as well as Vietnamese. A large, hand-calligraphied menu near the bar announced a varied and highly expensive fare of nouvelle French-Vietnamese cuisine. And the place was packed, mostly with well-dressed foreigners, with not an empty table.
As the maître d’ greeted him, Condley’s eyes met Khoa’s. For a quick moment the former singer’s gaze intensified, as if they might have once known each other. Then he caught a different kind of recognition in Condley’s face and looked quickly away, feigning interest in the string quartet. Condley watched him for another moment and then allowed himself a knowing smile. ‘I’d say the old government was probably right,’ he said to himself.
‘Excuse me, sir?’ The maître d’ seemed puzzled.
‘Your boss has himself a very nice place.’
‘Yes, sir,’ answered the maître d’, looking uncomfortably at Condley’s casual shirt and at the sweat that stained it. ‘Thank you for the compliment. Can I help you, sir?’
At that moment Condley both resented and envied the young man who stood before him. He had been born after the war, or certainly toward the end of it. Manipulation, treachery, betrayal – all were irrelevant unless they kept him from finding a much-needed job, and clearly his own family history had helped him get this one. To such a man, Vietnamese history had no lingering internal markings, no justifiable divisions, no past acts that bore remembering, other than the unexplainable conduct of ‘puppets’ such as Dzung. He had not been a part of the struggle. He brought nothing with him, no scars or memories that needed to be sorted out. Except, perhaps, those that were being carried by his family, and despite such scars, his family had won. So the rest could be forgotten, or at least never gone into. Vietnamese were simply Vietnamese, just as Germans were Germans or New Yorkers were New Yorkers. Some were heroes who were rewarded with good restaurants. And others were traitors who now drove cyclos.